More New 3.2 Changes

As the PTR gets closer and closer to coming online, more and more details are leaking out about 3.2. In addition to the new mounts and pet, there will be epic gems in the next patch. They will be prospected from titanium by jewelcrafters, purchased with honor, or, here's the best part, purchased with emblems of heroism. I've got more of these emblems saved up than I care to count. So it will be nice to finally get rid of these.

I'd imagine they will set the prices high, but not too high. When you think about it, we all have 6-12 gems to replace, so I'd think they'll set the prices around 30 to 40 emblems each. This gives people incentives to go back and run heroics, but also makes them a little more difficult to purchase than just running 2 heroics and getting a gem. I might be way off, and hopefully, the prices will be lower, but expect jewelcrafters to be charging the crap out of people when 3.2 hits.

With these epic gems, blacksmiths, by default, will receive an upgrade to their gear. Since they are able to add sockets and can now add epic gems to the sockets, Blizzard has to buff all the other professions. They say that lightweave will be buffed accordingly, but it's already a very impressive bonus for us tailors. According to Elitist Jerks theorycrafting, it provides a 150 dps gain, whereas the other professions give a 38-39 dps gain. So hopefully lightweave will be buffed, but I would imagine it could be nerfed and come back into line with the other professions (which would be perfect since I just leveled it up to gain lightweave embroidery).

Tailoring

So, after a long, arduous tailoring climb to 400, I'm ready for my Lightweave Embroidery. Auction house? Nope. Other guildmates? Nope. Turns out, it's like enchanting - you have to know how to make the embroidery and then just apply it to your cloak. Well, ok, let's just make some. What? It requires 420? Surely you jest.

Nope, even though you only need 400 tailoring to use Lightwave Embroidery, you need 420 to put it on your cloak. What is this madness? So, back to the auction house to buy more Frostweave Cloth. I've been farming it all weekend (well, the portion of the weekend after I farmed Netherweave, and Runecloth before that). And there's no way I can farm enough in time for my Wednesday raid to hit 420 tailoring. Luckily, Petrina had 40 bolts of Frostweave to send my way and the rest I scavenged from the Auction House. So here I am at 420. And what's this?

Now I can make Spellweave (x2 - I respecced Spellfire Tailoring as any good mage should do), Ebonweave, and Moonshroud! Yay for 4 day cooldowns...so I quickly got my embroidery and then, another added bonus, a Flying Carpet! I quickly withdrew the materials I needed from the Brown Coats' bank (my wonderful banking union) and made my first flying carpet. Hopefully I can reach 425 soon to make the most epic, Magnificent Flying Carpet.

So here I sit at 421, about to make some Moonshroud cloth to go to 422. I had hoped to get the epic carpet by Wednesday, but it'll probably just have to wait until I can do another round of Ebonweave, Spellweave, and Moonshroud as I'd rather use my mats on those than throw-away patterns that I'll just disenchant.

Shall I Switch?

Currently I'm a 375 Enchanter/Tailor. I picked them initially because they offered the greatest bonus to me as a mage. I could enchant my rings and I could tailor the Spellfire set. As we go into Wrath, I hear more and more about how there won't be as many reasons to continue with the professions I've chosen. Almost all high-level items made via crafting will be Bind on Equip (BoE) in Wrath. So no more Spellfire sets, no more high-end blacksmithing weapons. Instead, each profession gets it's own little perks.

Blacksmiths can add sockets, leatherworkers get furs for their bracers, tailors get embroiders for their cloaks, enchanters keep ring enchants, scribes get shoulder enchants better than the faction enchants, alchemists get increased effect and durtion from flasks and elixirs, jewelcrafters get BoPickup gems and trinkets, and engineers get their own aresenal of fun. (Most of this was culled from this great WowInsider Post)

Now, to break it down for me, as a mage.

Blacksmithing - add two sockets, one to bracers, one to gloves. Socket with 2xRuned Scarlet Ruby = +38 spell power.

Leatherworking - add "fur" to bracers. Add Fur Lining - Spell Power = +67 spell power. Minus out a bracer enchant = +37 spell power.

Tailoring - Early theorycrafting puts the gained DPS at about 24.4 for Lightweave Embroidery. And you have to give up a nice cloak enchant such as Greater Speed. As of now, this profession seems to be the weakest.

Incription - Enchanting the shoulders with Master's Inscription of the Storm adds 61 spellpower and 15 crit. Subtracting out Greater Inscription of the Storm, we get a net gain of +37 spell power.

Alchemists get increased effect and duration of flasks and elixirs along with Mercurial Alchemist Stone, +50 haste, +59 spell power, +40% effect from potions (however, you lose a trinket spot, so net effect is yet to be seen) - it is quite powerful when you hit level 75 though.

Jewelcrafters get their BoP gems and trinkets. Three Runed Dragon's Eyes gives you three +13 (after subtracting out rare quality gems), or +36 spell power (plus BoP trinkets - like this sweet Twilight Serpent, which not only increases hit by a great amount, but it has an on use effect and two sockets, which have a bonus of +7 spellpower. Not too shabby.

Engineering gets their sweet Visage Liquification Goggles which have consistently been upgradeable to the latest tier equivalent in Burning Crusade via v2 or v3. These liquification goggles are amazing and probably wouldn't go out of style for a long time and would probably only be replaced if there were a tier set that surpassed it with set bonuses.

So right now, I'm seriously considering dropping Tailoring and leveling Engineering. I won't miss the cloak enchant as I am currently in love with haste and while not having a flying carpet will be tough to deal with, I will be able to craft an amazing pair of goggles and my own flying and riding vehicles. Add to that the availability of another pet that has eluded me thus far, and I'd be sitting pretty. It'll be very tough to drop tailoring after all that I've spent on rare recipes, but I feel that Engineering will be more beneficial to me in Wrath and now is the time to start working on it.

Back...

((Well, I'm back from Comic-Con. Got a chance to sit in on the World of Warcraft panel and hear all about the comic books, the manga, the card game, the figurines, everything except...the game. But that's what I expected. It was a talk about the merchandise. Only when they opened it up for Q&A did the game get discussed, and even then, questions like..."Why no legendary for hybrid druids" came up and just frustrated all those involved.

Alas, no pet was handed out and the "special gift" mentioned in the description of the panel was a lame WoW trading card game pin. We did get a very nice exclusive Comic-Con issue of the comic book which we got signed by the artist, so that's a nice bonus. But the panel was pretty...blah. Except of course meeting up with Vetarra and Narina from my guild. Always nice to meet guildies outside of the game and especially ones who are as nice as they were.))

So after my vacation, I was amped to get out and start killing things again, especially with my new Ethereal Soul-Trader following me around collecting Soul Credits. I made room for my Firefly in the bank and now just carry my Soul-Trader and my Rocket Chicken.

Oh yeah, I'm currently carrying Don Carlos' Famous Hat with me as the aforementioned wonderful Vetarra, Aracely, and Khyras helped me obtain it yesterday. Don Carlos is a pushover really and we killed him a few times in heroic with just 4 people (probably could be done with 3 or even 2 if you could get enough DPS) and we all got our hats. I also obtained my pattern for Dress Shoes as it was sold out the first time I tried to buy it. Together with the Haliscan items, I could make a nice little outfit. Though I'll probably go for the Soul-Trader outfit first.

With the addition of my Soul-Trader and Ghost Wolf, I sit at 71 of 83 pets collected. An impressive feat and I cannot wait until I can free up 71 bag spaces with the expansion.

Ahn'Qiraj Fun

Last Thursday, Flamehelix organized a guild run of AQ20 which was mainly put together to get him the blacksmithing patterns from the Lieutenant. Unfortunately, during a knockback, the boss took out the lieutenant, but we carried on. While inside, I was able to pick up a Blade of Vaulted Secrets which I threw Potency on for the glow.

I think we'll be going back to work on those blacksmithing patterns again and perhaps I can complete the Trappings set.

On an unrelated note, I have been buying bijous and coins off the auction house since I can't seem to get Zul'Gurub runs going and I have acheived honored status amongst the Zandalar tribe. And while this now allows me to turn in my Arcanums of Rapidity, it more importantly allows me to buy Pattern: Bloodvine Leggings and Formula: Brilliant Wizard Oil.

Recipe Progression

The wonderful Ackis Recipe List has kept me on top of my game and I finally got around to documenting how far I've come with my professions. We'll start with the easiest and best looking list of the four - first aid - 100%!



It wasn't too tough to get to 100% as there are only 15 recipes and most are trainable, but hey, I made it. Next up is cooking:



I've got a few recipes to go there and until I can organize a raid into Blackwing Lair, I will be unable to obtain the recipe for Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops. With a little more work though I should be able to get to 114/115 cooking recipes. Now, to tailoring...



As you can see, I'm at 88% of all tailoring recipes. However, this doesn't take into account that there are recipes I will not ever be able to learn (of course, without switching to exalted Aldor). There's a few recipes I still need to search down - some from Zul'Gurub rep, one in Karazhan still, and then just random other recipes from around the world. I still need to keep on raiding Knot Thimblejack's Cache and hope for some patterns from there as well.



For enchanting, I'm at 199/221 recipes or 90%. A few are from the old world, Ahn'Qiraj which no one raids any more and some others from Zul'Gurub reputation. And then there's just a ton that drop in Outland instances which I really don't want to farm, but will at some point. And the last ones on the list are really expensive rare drops which I'm still saving up for.

So there you have it. Not too shabby - 88% tailoring, 90% enchanting. Cooking should be close to finished soon and first aid is done. Next...on to pet completion!

Recipe Completion

With little to do last night, I scanned my recipe list to see which recipes I needed to acquire. In total, there were 11 cooking recipes I did not know. So I enlisted the help of a friendly troll shaman who searched out three of them and put them on the neutral auction house for me. I have a ways to go, but the rest of them just require more traveling. The one recipe I fear I will not be able to obtain, leaving me one short of every recipe is Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops. They require a kill of the third boss in Blackwing Lair, an instance I have not ventured into yet, and I fear I would need many skilled friends to accompany me. But perhaps there are others who would like to obtain that recipe and might join me.

Looking through my tailoring patterns, I realized there was one easy pattern I could obtain, so after killing overmaster Pyron three times, he finally dropped the pattern for Cloak of Fire. I also found an amazing deal on the auction house and bought Pattern: Vengeance Wrap for just 500g.

20 Quests and Counting

After all was said and done tonight, I'm halfway towards friendly with the Shattered Sun Offensive, the Gold Team killed Gruul, and I completed 20 of the 25 daily quests.

Did the cooking quest, the fishing quest, the quests in Nagrand and Netherstorm, the Ogri'la quests, the Skettis quests, and a majority of the Netherwing quests. I did one PvP quest in Hellfire Peninsula and I also was able to turn in one of each of my PvP tokens for even more gold. After all the quests, minus the gold spent on large prismatic shards, I think I made over 200g tonight and it was all quite easy.

I should find out tomorrow if I won my Oozling and at this rate, I should be able to purchase a couple Hearts of Darkness for my Mantle of Nimble Thought sometime soon.

Weekend Updates

Other than grinding Wintersaber rep, I found a couple of sweet patterns on the auction house. I can now craft a Mantle of Nimble Thought and a Swiftheal Mantle. I plan on making the Mantle of Nimble Thought just as soon as I can purchase two Hearts of Darkness. I picked up the Swiftheal pattern to just round out my tailoring recipe collection (it was a cheap 350g).

I also was invited to a Karazhan run with the great guys from Rough Raiders (quite a bit of Gold Team people in there too) and we cleared Kara last night in very good time for a team that is geared, but not at Z'A/Gruul's level. I missed Attumen as I was working on my Wintersaber rep, but still, I'll take the 21 badges as I had expected to earn zero this week. I'm up to 160 or so badges now I believe...well on my way to the 210 I will need at the time of 2.4 to purchase the Scryer's Blade of Focus for 150 badges and the Fused Nethergon Band for 60 badges. I already have all the mats except for the Prismatic Shards to enchant both items and I'll be set. These two upgrades will give me 24 additional stamina, 12 intellect, 28 hit rating, and 48 damage at the cost of 23 crit rating. But with the additional hit rating, I can resocket a few items and easily gain 28 damage or crit. Oh yeah, I lose 10MP/5 - a worthless stat in my opinion. Especially with the Spirit/Intellect mana regeneration changes.

Also, while running Wintersaber rep, I picked up beads to turn in for Timbermaw rep and I'm currently at 17,400 out of 21,000 rep needed for exalted. I have 50 more beads on me which translate to 1,500 more rep, so I'm at about 19,000 out of 21,000. A little more grinding for beads and feathers and I shall quickly be exalted with 21 factions.

Festival Tailoring

After a quick run around the southern part of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, I amassed 20 coins and bought two patterns of Festival Dress and Festival Suit. I now sit at 257 known tailoring patterns. There are 301 possible recipes I could know. A nice 85% of all recipes. A lot to go though...and none that easy to find.